CFPB Official: New Agency Will Streamline ATM Regs

ATM deployers, including credit unions, may find that having the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in charge of payments regulation to be more of a help than a hindrance, according to a CFPB official.

Maria Blow, assistant director for the agency and head of its card and payments market group, predicted the CFBP would streamline many ATM and other payments regulations.

“One of the things that we have specifically hung out as a shingle is an interest in streamlining regulation.,” Blow said in an interview with the industry news website, ATM Marketplace. “There's kind of this notion that law gets written and very little gets un-written. And we have the opportunity to streamline here. Where is there overlap? Where is there unnecessary duplication? What are the regulations that are pain points?”

In the interview, Blow cast herself as coming from industry and having an ability to bring an industry perspective to the regulatory process and touted the fact that she is not a lawyer.

“So often all of what's happening in legislation and in writing rules is all lawyers talking to each other,” Blow said in the interview. “I am certainly surrounded by lawyers but I myself am not a lawyer. And I think that's important; it makes for a different perspective and it makes me focused on — in some ways, I think — different things.”